A court of heraldry was added to this strange brew: in overseeingmarriages and maintaining pedigree, it provided further evidence of theintention to fix (and police) class identity.
Presumably these early ideas of marriage and pedigree in the Carolinas heavily influenced not only class laws but issues with miscegenation which still have root there today.
I had never heard of a Josephite marriage, a union inspired by the relationship between Joseph and the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Why is this framed with Joseph's name instead of Mary?
In the New Testament, familial metaphors are frequently used to describe Christians and what came to be construed as the universal Church. Christians are “brothers” and “sisters” to one another. Weirdly, collectively they are also the body and the bride of Christ. Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands “as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior” (Ephesians 5:22-23). This teaching of male headship is, of course, a source of much abuse of women in conservative Christian circles, and evangelical pastors have been known to abuse, to sweep abuse under the rug, and to counsel women that they must remain in abusive marriages since, after all, Jesus himself forbade divorce, and God can use suffering for good.
And of course this also likely the source of American mores which have delivered us the power struggle that results in abuses which have boiled over into the MeToo scandals.
during the hour which passed before the gentlemen appeared.
.” It was customary during that time for men to take leave of women after dinner and go to a different room to smoke: "A gentlemen never smokes in the presence of ladies"(Pool, DanielWhat Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knewpp54-56 and http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~runge/MasonJA1.html)